Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1887-08-05
TALMAGE'S SERMON,
The Weekly Discourse of the Great
Brooklyn Preacher

-homans, Kill, Is
Before the world is converted the style OF
religious discourse will have to be converted.
You might as well go into the modern Sedan
or Gettysburg with bows and arrows instead
or rifles and bombshells and sparks of artil-
lery, as to expect to conquer this world for
God by the old styles of exhortation and SER
monolgy. Jonathan Edwards preached the
sermons most adapted to the age in which he
nVed, but II those sermons were preached now
they would divide an audience into two
classes, those sound asleep and those wanting
to go home.
Bnt there is a religious discourse of the
future-who will preach it l have no idea; in
what part of the earth it will be born have
no idea; in which denominations of Christians
it viii be delivered / cannot guess That
discourse or exhortation may be born in the
country meeting house on the banks of the
st Lawrence, or the Oregon, or the Ohio, or
the Tombigbee, or the Alabama The per-
son who shall deliver it may this moment be
IN cradle under the shadow of the Sierra
Nevadas, or i'll New England farmhouse
or amid the rice-tields of Southern Savannas
Or this moment there may be some young man
IN some OF our theological seminaries, i'll the
Junior or middle or senior class, shaping that
weapon of power. Or there may be coming
some new baptism of the Holy Ghost on the
churches, so that some of us who now stand
in the watch-towers of Zion, waking to a
realization of our present ineficiency, may
preach it ourselves That coming discourse
may not be fifty years off. And let us pray
God that its arrival may be FASTENED, while |
announce to you what | think will be the
chief characteristics of that discourse or ex-
hortation when it does arrive, and | want to
make the remarks of the morning appropri-
ate and suggestive to all classes OF Christian
workers
First of all remark, that that future re-
igious discourse will be full of a living
Christ in contradistinction to didactic techni-
calities. A discourse may be full of Christ
though hardly mentioning His name, and
sermon may be empty of Christ while every
sentence is repititious of His titles The
world wants a living Christ, not q Christ
standing at the head of formal system of
theology, but Christ who means pardon and
sympathy, and coincidence, and brotherhood,
and life, and heaven. A poor mans Christ.
rich mans Christ An overworked mans
Christ. An invalids Christ. A farmers
Christ. A merchants Christ. An artisans
christ. An every mans Christ
A symmetrical and fine-worded system OF
theology is well enough for theological
classes, but it has no more business in a pull
pit than have the technical phrases of an
anatomist or psychologist or physician in
the sick room of patient The world wants
help immediate and world-uplifting, and it
will come through discourse in which
Christ shall walk right down into the immor-
tai soul and take everlasting possession of it,
filling it as full of light as is this monday
ornament.
That sermon or exhortation of the future
will not deal with man in the thread
bare illustrations of Jesus Christ In that
coming address there will be instances of
yicarious suffering taken right out of every
day life, for there is not a day somebody is
not dying for others. AS the physician saw
ing his diphtheritic patient by sacrificing his
own own life; as the ship captain going. down
with his vessel while he is getting his pas
sengers into the lfe-boat; as the ire
man consuming in the burning huilding
while he is taking a child out
of a fourth-story window: as in summer
the strong swimmer at East Hampton, or
Long Branch, or Cape May, or Lake George,
himself persisted trying to rescue the drown
ing; as the newspaper boy one summer sup
porting his mother for some years, his invalid
mother, when offered by gentleman fifty
cents to get some especial paper and he got
It, and rushed up in his anxiety to deliver it,
and was crushed under the wheels of the
train, and lay on the grass with only strength
enough to say: "Oh, what will become of my
poor sick mother nowF'
Vlcarious suffering. The world is full of it,
An engineer said to me on a locomotive in
Dakota "We men seem to be coming to
better appreciation than we used to. Did
you see that account the other day of an
engineer who, to save his passengers, stuck to
his place, and when he was found dead in the
locomotive, which was upside down, he was
found still smiling, his hand on the air rake?"
And as the engineer said it to me, he put his
hand on the air-brake to illustrate his mean
ing, and l looked at him and thought "You
would be just as much of hero in the same
2risis"
Oh, in that religious discourse of the future
there will be living illustrations taken out
from everyday life of vcarious suffering
illustrations that will bring to mind the
ghastlier sacrifice of Him who in the high
places OF the field on the cross, fought our
battles, and wept our griefS. and endured our
struggle, and died our death.
A German sculptor made an image of
Christ anu he asked his little child two Years
old who 1t was, and she said: "That must be
some great man." The sculptor was dis
pleased with the criticism, so he got
another block of marble, and chiseled
away on it two Or three years, and then he
brought in his little child four or five years of
age, and he said to her: who do Won think
that isf' she said THAT must be the One who
took little children in his arms and blessed
them" Then the sculptor was satisfied. Oh.
my friends, what the world wants is not
cold Christ not an intellectual Christ, not &
severely magisterial Christ but a loving
Christ, spreading out His arms of sympathy
to press the whole world to His loving heart
But, l remark again, that the religious dis
course of the future will be short. Condensa-
ton is demanded by the age in which we live
No more need of long introductions and long
applications, and so many divisions to dis
course that it may be said to be hydra headed
In other days men got all their information
from the pulpit. There We're few books and
there were no newspapers, and there was lit
tie travel from place to place, and people
would sit and listen two and half
hours to a religious discourse, and
"seventeenthly" would find them fresh
and clipper. In those days there was
enough time for man to take an hour to
warm himself up to the subject and an hour
to cool off, But what was a necessity then
IS a superf1uity now Congregations are full
OF knowledge from books, from newspapers
from rapid and continuous intercommunica-
tlon, and long disquisitions of what they
know already will not be abided If reig-
1ous teacher cannot compress what he wishes
to say to the people in the space of forty-fve
minutes, better adjourn it to some other day
The trouble is we preach audiences into q
Christian frame, and then we preach them
out of it. We forget that every auditor has
so much capacity of attention, and when that
is exhausted he is restless That accident on
the Long Island Railroad some years ago
came from the fact that the brakes were out
of order, and when they wanted to stop the
train they could not stop, and hence the
casualty was terrific. In all religious dis.
course we want locomotive power and pro-
pulsion. We want at the same time stout
brakes to let down at the right instant. 1t is
dismal thing after q hearer has compre-
hended the whole subject, to hear man say:
"Now to recapitulate, and "a few words 6y
way of application" and "once more" and
finally" and "now to conclude"
Paul preached until midnight, and Euty-
chus got sound asleep and fell out of win
dow and broke his neck. Some would say:
Good for him" | would rather be sympa-
thetic like Paul and resusctate him. That
accident is often quoted now in religious
circles as a warning against somnolence in
church 1t is just as much q warning to min
listers against prolixity Eutychus was